I'm splintering this discussion off from the Pitch thread, just for bookkeeping's sake.

Chah:

"I feel that what made Rise of the Eldrazi's play style distinct is in the buildup phase. Rise of the Eldrazi made Eldrazi playable by ensuring a slow pace in the early game through low-power high-toughness guys. Most sets try to avoid board stalls; RoE ecouraged them because there's plenty of ways to break through powerful effects in the late game. RoE also had Eldrazi Spawn tokens.

If we change how the early game plays and find another way to enable Eldrazi, it will feel like a different style of play. If we don't change the early game or the enablers and just swap out the finisher creatures for another type of finisher creatures, it will feel like the same style of gameplay (although depending on what those finishers are, they might serve better or worse in creating a tense, desperate final race).

I believe we have found another way to enable Eldrazi and make them main-deckable, with the mechanic of gaining gold counters off of combat damage and other hoops, as well as with the Duel mechanic. The version I'm talking about doesn't have those wall-like high-toughness creatures and early game board stalls. It involves a lot of attacking and combat tricks, and a tense battle for gold. The stakes for getting gold as well as preventing the opponent from getting gold are high, especially when you see an Eldrazi revealed in the opponent's hand. Sometimes you just win with damage before any Eldrazi hit the board (although the Eldrazi are still useful for winning Duels in those games). Sometimes creatures from both sides just end up trading and wiping each other out, and then it's time for Eldrazi to hit the board. It won't be the "buildup phase->battlecruiser phase" set, it will be the "intense combat with high stakes right from the start" set. "

I'm admittedly still keeping my eyes open for an extra twist, something to set this set apart. It could be that gold counters should be that thing - certainly, many other designers find them very appealing. But I am afraid that the mechanic simply does nothing for me.

How different are gold counters from Eldrazi tokens? Not very, surely, and while they are weaker generally so you can make the effects that grant them stronger, if you push them too much, they quickly break the game (like any fast mana). They are less interactive and less interesting than Eldrazi spawn. You realize this and have a good plan to counteract both of these flaws - change the triggers that grant the gold counters, create more tension on the front-side. Maybe you can do enough "deals damage, gain a gold" cards that it'll be interesting. Maybe you can find cards that interact with gold directly without feeling parasitic.

But I'm admittedly skeptical. I'm interested in trying a set mixing top-down western tropes, (potentially) lands-matter-but-not-Zendikar, and a battlecruiser focus. Exploring different ways of working with Magic's built-in resources — lands, cards, spells, and life — to make both the Old West and Battlecruiser themes come alive piques my interest more than adding another type of counter.

While I happen to have some personal ideas about some mechanics that might work well together, it's true that at this stage we should probably just be trying out various mechanics based on Western tropes and try to pick up on budding game play that emerges from that before settling on a direction.

I don't think Gold counters are parasitic, though. While Gold counters are not a natural resource like lands, cards, spells, and life, mana is a natural resource, so Gold counters would interact naturally with almost every card printed so far. I'd like Hire to be in the set too, because it's so flavorfully Western and it's ok for sets to have a few parasitic mechanics, but for me it's not the main reason to do Gold.

Also maybe Gold counters could be made to produce mana of any color to make them feel special as well as more distinct from Eldrazi Spawn. That could create a new style of play where you start out with the normal number of colors (2) and then branch out into different colors in the late game.

By the way, it would probably be very hard to make Battlecruiser Magic work without some cards that produce more than one mana, so if you want the mana to come from lands, we would probably need a repeatable dig or a dig that fetches more than one land, and some acceleration (which may or may not come from the dig).

Also maybe Gold counters could be made to produce mana of any color to make them feel special as well as more distinct from Eldrazi Spawn. That could create a new style of play where you start out with the normal number of colors (2) and then branch out into different colors in the late game.

I find this an dubious choice. Basically if you turn gold counters into a mana-fixing mechanic, then the mechanic no longer can be used on cards of any color other than green. Mind you this is assuming the counters are inherently capable of generating the mana. I'm fine with a red card with "Spend X gold counters: add half that much R to your mana pool, rounded down."